[Now Released]: Software rendering option removed

[Fergus H]

In the latest beta of Premiere Pro and Media Encoder, the option to choose software rendering - “Mercury Playback Engine Software Only” - has been removed. Software rendering can cause poor performance and rendering in 8-bit, which can result in banding. In this beta and future released versions of our products, all rendering will be done using the GPU. 

This change affects: 

• Premiere Pro - Macintosh Intel
• Premiere Pro - Windows
• Media Encoder - all platforms

Note that this change has no effect on Premiere Pro on Apple silicon computers, as software rendering has never been an option on this platform. 

What renderer is being used by Premiere Pro is a project-specific setting. If a project using Mercury Playback Engine Software Only is opened in the latest beta of Premiere Pro, the renderer will automatically switch to a GPU-powered renderer. 

We would appreciate your feedback on this change. 

Regards,

Fergus

[Fergus H]

Hi all, 

This change is now shipping in the v25.2 version of our products. We appreciate the feedback you provided during beta! If you have any questions, please post them in the regular (i.e., non-beta) forum for the product you are using. 

As always, if you have any issues with rendering or exporting, please try updating your video driver, either from Windows Update or from the company that makes your GPU. 

Regards,

Fergus